A virtual cluster system consists of a controller (Controller) and a Forwarding Point (FP), where the controller is configured to perform centralized control on the FP in the virtual cluster system; the FP is configured to externally forward a packet of a virtual cluster; and a control channel needs to be established between the controller and the FP to perform internal packet transmission of the virtual cluster. In the prior art, a routing connection is established between a controller and an FP by using the Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP), and the FP establishes a control channel with the controller by using the routing connection. Because there may be multiple FPs in a virtual cluster, an IGP neighbor relationship needs to be separately established between FPs, and between an FP and the controller. In this case, each FP in the virtual cluster needs to maintain multiple IGP neighbor relationships, and each FP needs to store routing information for reaching another FP in the virtual cluster. An FP needs to maintain an IGP neighbor relationship with an FP in a virtual cluster or a controller in the virtual cluster all the time, which, as a result, increases load of a Central Processing Unit (CPU) of the FP, degrades forwarding performance of the FP, and is adverse to development of the virtual cluster technology.